Have you just downloaded The Witcher Battle Arena and have no idea where to start or what to do? I’m not surprised given its tutorial is far from helpful. But no worries: we’re here to give you some helpful tips and tricks on how to get ahead!

The Basics

Like so many free to play MOBAs, The Witcher Battle Arena gives you some characters for free before requiring you to unlock more for a price (in-game or otherwise).

Pick a character and stick with it. Each character has their own playing style, with different types suiting different players. Learn what works for you and stick with it.

Melee based fighters are generally the best choice when you’re learning early on, with ranged fighters being a bit trickier and requiring more practice.

Each character gains experience and items individually, which is another reason to focus on one or two at most.

You can gain experience and coins through playing the practice mode, giving you the perfect opportunity to build up your character before diving into the much harder PvP side of things.

Once you feel comfortable with practice mode, dip into co-op and learn what it's like to play alongside other players. Again, it'll earn you experience as you play.

Remember to equip new items. They come at a steady pace after each game, with gold also being useful to use during a match.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt may still be a few months away, but very soon players will be able to get a new taste of the acclaimed Polish RPG on their mobile devices with The Witcher Battle Arena. While it trades open-world exploration for compact multiplayer brawls, we see how much of that old Witcher charm remains in this edition of It Came From Canada!

The Witcher Battle Arena definitely has a lot of MOBA elements, but its changes are significant enough to keep it from fitting squarely into that genre. Players choose from a handful of characters from Witcher lore, like lumbering trolls or agile archers, each with their own skills to master like giant arrows or fire storms. From there they team up with two other players to fight another team of three, whether it’s online humans or bots, to the death.

But instead of using typical MOBA ideas like creeps or lanes or turrets or crystals, here battles boil down to direct confrontations and capturing outposts. To whittle their opponents’ health to zero, players kill their foes as well as maintain control over the three outposts as long as possible. Conquering a neutral outpost takes just a few moments, but once they are all quickly snapped up, players must last long enough to completely steal control points for their team. This back and forth makes up much of the game. Although the limited arenas are compact to the point of claustrophobic, teams must still make sure not to spread themselves too thin as they try to take enemy territory while simultaneously protecting the base. The variety of skills and shop upgrades add to the tactics, and just one well-executed surge can move a match from a stalemate to a decisive victory in minutes. It’s about being in the thick of constant carnage instead of sneakily circumventing it looking for the last kill. Compared to most MOBAs, it’s less detached.

It also looks pretty good considering its unenviable position of being compared to a gorgeous AAA console cousin. The smaller maps allow for more details and the grim fantasy aesthetic of The Witcher shines through. It may not surpass Vainglory’s visuals, which are a graphical showcase for iOS MOBAs and iOS games (period), but it’s impressive nonetheless.

Just as The Witcher refuses to be like all other RPGs, The Witcher Battle Arena rejects rigid MOBA conventions. We’ll see how well that pays off when the game fully launches soon.

Based in the Witcher universe, CD PROJEKT RED's The Witcher Battle Arena is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). In an effort to keep things fair and balanced, the developer has said that the game will have no pay to win elements.

Benjamin Lee, Producer for Mobile Games, CD PROJEKT RED sounds very excited about the project: “We are extremely passionate about games, whether they be for PC, console or mobile devices. The Witcher Battle Arena is our take on the MOBA genre and we are really excited at the prospect of sharing it with the gaming community! We highly value fans of The Witcher, and their opinions have always been paramount in helping us develop a great gaming experience--The Witcher Battle Arena is no exception!”

The Witcher Battle Arena is pretty exciting news for fans of the series, but if you have never played a Witcher game, this app still looks like it will be a quality MOBA. Check out the new trailer below.

A few weeks ago I was led into a room to see something new from Fuero Games and The Witcher developers CD Projekt. Something that involved The Witcher. I had hopes and fears much like you’d expect. Would it be a port? A spin-off? Maybe a town-building sim?

Turns out it was The Witcher Battle Arena - a free-to-play Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) game set in the same universe as the popular titles from consoles and PC. It’s also looking pretty freaking great at the moment, to be honest.

The Witcher Battle Arena has been designed for mobile from the ground up. It uses a fairly straightforward control system that allows you to tap to move to a specific location, drag the camera around, or tap and hold/drag to guide your hero more directly. Tapping on an opponent will attack, and you can tap on different skill buttons to trigger them.

Most of the expected MOBA bits are present and accounted for as well. Each hero starts at level 1 and will gain experience throughout the match, skills may be upgraded with each level, money earned automatically and by fighting rival heroes can be used to purchase better and better hero-specific gear, and so on. About the only major changes to the basic formula are the lack of endlessly spawning minions on either side and smaller arenas that encourage direct player-on-player interaction. In other words everything has been streamlined so that matches are fast and brutal.

I imagine the whole “free” thing might still be making you a tad nervous but the developers are adamant that The Witcher Battle Arena will not be a pay-to-win game. There are no wait timers, no hard currencies, and absolutely everything from new characters to vanity items can be earned simply by playing.

The Witcher Battle Arena doesn’t have a set release date yet, but it will launch with a decent selection of playable characters (eight in total - Eithne of Brokilon, Ioverth, Letho of Gulet, Zoltan Chivay, Saskia of Aedrin, Philippa Eilhart, The Operator, and a Golem). And it’ll be free, of course.

The Witcher is an incredibly popular PC RPG franchise, and now Chillingo is hoping to bring that popularity to iOS. The company has announced a partnership with developer one2tribe which will see The Witcher Versus landing on the App Store in the near future. The game will be based on the browser-based title of the same name which was also developed by one2tribe.

According the the press release, players can plan to "Choose between the classes of Witcher, Sorceress or Frightener and jump right into the fray of battle. Fight, gain experience and develop your skills against other players. Embark on quests to prove bravery and battle enemies to unlock new weapons, amulets, and magical items. Players can compete against others playing the online browser and WAP versions of the game for an unparalleled MMO dueling experience."

“The Witcher franchise is one of the industry’s most popular PC RPG games and we are proud to collaborate with one2tribe to bring this new version of the browser-based MMO dueling title to the iPhone and iPod touch,” said Joe Wee, Co-General Manager of Chillingo. “We aim to provide consumers with a variety of game genres to choose from and The Witcher: Versus shines as one of our best MMO titles to date.”

Neither Chillingo nor one2tribe have offered any details on pricing or a potential release date, and they also haven't stated if there are any plans to create an iPad version of the game. We'll make sure to keep an eye out for any new info as it becomes available.

The announcement should be welcome news to iPhone and iPod owners at the least, because if the same level of care goes into creating the mobile version as it does the computer and browser-based editions of the game then we're in for a real treat. This is definitely a title to keep on your radar moving forward.